When showing the 100 metres races .. place a white 7foot high white sheet along the whole length of the course.

Project onto this image realtime (from behind) the side-film footage taken of the person who holds the current world record -- a film of that exact event when he/she actually performed
the amazing time. This film footage will be syncronised with the starting gun for the current race.

Now viewers get to see the athletes 'virtually' racing against the world record holder's actual effort -- making a better spectator sport. A lot easier than trying to mentally compare a 9.93 second run with the 9.89 world record (or whatever it is). Most importantly, adds excitement.

Could be imported to other events .. swimming, hurdles etc. Also useful for special events .. directly compare athletes of different era's. Watch Jesse Owen from the 30s vs Carl Lewis. Get those viewing figures back up!

I like the idea, if not the implementation. Putting up a sheet means there are people in the stadium who can't see the action.

This could be done via CGI, like the yellow "first down" stripe seen on television during US football games. This also allows events like pole vaulting or ski jumping to be included. People in the stadium interested in the feature could watch on overhead monitors.

For strictly race events, a light could be shone on the course to represent the relative position of the "ghost". I do foresee an issue with deciding which "ghosts" are used.

//place a white 7foot high white sheet// As opposed to a black 7 foot high white sheet??

I like the idea however, but not for TV. You could do it much more effectively on TV using digital technology. This would be good for people in the stadium. It might also be good for athletes aiming for the world record to actually compete against a phantom runner. Another branch on this idea is to have figures of past runners (Jesse owens, Carl Lewis etc) also in ht equation, just to give people a comparison on how far weve come since then. If you wanted to simplify it, you could have an electric bunny (like in the dog races) instead of the whole 'white 7 foot white sheet' thing.

The "World record moving white line' is regularly used on Australian television for swimming events and uses the actual split times of the world record setter - thought it was widely known to exist around the world.